June 26, 2012

The college football playoff is a go: The mythical NCAA football championship has expanded from two teams to four. As of the 2014 season, the top four teams at the end of the season will be seeded 1-4 and 2-3 in a rotation of the four current BCS bowls (and two more to be determined) on December 31st and January 1st, with the winners proceeding to a championship game (which cities will bid to host, much like the Super Bowl) on the first Monday in January at least six days after the latter semifinal. The selections will be made by a committee, which will take into account records, strength of schedule, head-to-head results and conference championships.

A four-team playoff is a joke; it would be like the college basketball tournaments having just 16 teams.

I disagree - the football championship is only about the championship, while the basketball tournament is as much about being in the tournament itself. The number of football teams in serious contention for being considered the best team in the country is usually somewhere around 4, while I'm sure there are quite a few tournament teams that would be overjoyed just to get out of the first round. There will certainly still be disagreements from schools like Boise State, but a 4-team playoff is still way better than what they had.

In other news this is a step in the right direction. Even as a die-hard Bama fan (then sec fan) I realize college football has become too predictable and even a bit dull. Id love to see someone else play for a national championship.

College football has the best regular season of all sports because each and every game matters. The wider you spread the playoffs, the more you dilute the quality and excitement of regular season play.

This story claims that non-BCS schools would have gotten five spots in the past 12 years, if this playoff was in place, and Boise State would've been in last year.

They say that's based on "data provided to the [college] presidents", but I have to ask what that data was based on. At the end of the 2011 season, Boise State was ranked no higher than 6th in any poll (USA Today [Coaches] and Harris), behind the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-12 champions and one SEC team that would have been put in by any selection committee that wasn't specifically kept from considering teams that didn't win their conference -- which included Boise State, who lost a game and the Mountain West Conference title to TCU.